The science of choosing where to study

What's the best undergraduate physics course in the country? A pretty simple question, no?

And a lot of people think they can tell you the answer. That's why we have university league tables (such as the THE magazine World University Rankings that came out recently) and other guides that tell you which universities and which courses at which universities are the best.

The UK government is hoping to make university choices even easier, with the development of the Key Information Set, which will gather together several different pieces of data, such as essential stats about courses, the cost of accommodation and employment figures, from a range of surveys and make them all widely available.

You will be able to download it yourselves, and all university course websites will need to display some of their own KIS data. So from next summer, anyone and everyone will be able to instantly compare stats and work out, once and for all, who is best. Or at least, that's the idea.

I am delighted that this useful, interesting and valuable information is going to be made as free as possible. But, there are issues, and at core, they lie with the question I posed above.

So, just what is the best physics department in the country? Here's the answer: nobody knows and nobody can tell you. You can come up with all the metrics you want on student satisfaction, contact time, employment rates and so on, but the whole concept of what the "best" course for Student X is so tied up with softer issues that it's impossible - and not desirable - to render that choice down to a statistical measure.

Perhaps Student X likes a particular sport and the university facilities are important to her? Perhaps he needs to be close to home to see his mum at weekends? Perhaps she wants a good gig scene nearby (the clinching factor for me back in the day). And so on. None of this is captured by a league table or statistical metric.

And if that wasn't troublesome enough - what do these stats actually measure? This is a real topic for debate. Sure, we can see what the employment rate for physics at University Y is and then compare it with that at University Z. Imagine that Y's course has a 2 per cent better rate than Z's. Is Y better than Z? Can we compare data in this way? Which? Magazine, which is planning on compiling an authoritative universities guide, seems to think so. But Y and Z don't have the same curriculum because, thank goodness, it isn't standardised across institutions. Perhaps Z offers a module you want to do that Y doesn't have or has a research specialism you're interested in. Perhaps Y is in an affluent city in the south that hasn't had such a hard time in the recession, whilst Z's in the north and has been effected. Since a significant proportion of the graduate cohort from most institutions get jobs locally when they leave, all we could be seeing is a comparison between the local labour markets for Y and Z. Is 2 per cent that big a difference? Unfortunately, there's a "perhaps" hiding under every data point.

And, even when you have all of this data, do we have a population at large that is equipped to interpret it effectively? Even though we have a computer-literate, well-educated and generally pretty smart population of young people in the UK, that doesn't mean they they - or their parents - are always well-equipped to interpret some of the complex and context-sensitive information that they can access. We need to be clear about what this information can tell us - and what it can't.

Because, when it comes down to it, the strength of the UK university system is that, apart from a handful at the top and bottom, all our institutions are pretty good. If you look at the data and compare five institutions, you'll probably find little variance between them. In the end, you should choose the one that offers the course mix you like, feels the best when you visit, and has the facilities you're looking for.

What will make your time at university a success or failure will be things you can't measure - whether you feel comfortable there, whether you get on with the lecturers, the quality of your social and romantic adventures and how hard and how smart you're prepared to work on your chosen course. Ultimately, the physics course that you find suits you best is the best in the country for you, regardless of what scores it might have achieved at some time before you even studied there. Sometimes going with your gut works better than going with the numbers.